As you all know, I have the 'Haterade' moniker on this
web site for a reason. I am usually the lone dissenter
in WLTI, and while other members of our group try to
water the flowers, I bring to the party a vat of
hydrochloric acid. I have always been the bad guy and I
will probably continue to be the bad guy - but I do this
because I want to be as fair and unbiased as I can to
you, the viewer.

So with this being said, it's on to ravage the show that
everyone is going to laud over - and the one that I am
going to get a ton of hate mail over - Game Show
Marathon.

Let me start by saying that I so wanted to like this
show. I really, really did. Unfortunately, I didn't get
a Game Show Marathon. I got a warped, watered down
version of shows that I grew up with. I could write a
short novel on why the first two shows made me sick to
my stomach, but I will limit myself to 5 of them.

1. The Editing - Remember when Deal or No Deal's editing
sounded like it came from a cave? Well, if Deal or No
Deal was from a cave, then this was from Carlsbad
Caverns. Besides the really choppy editing, we don't get
to see Kathy Najimy's second putt from Hole in One (or
two) and her whole deal from Let's Make a Deal.

We also are not privy to why Lance Bass decided to not
to go into the Big Deal. The strategy was sound (if no
one wins the big deal, then he gets the finalist slot),
but we don't get to understand it because it was edited
out. Whoever edited the show was obviously not a game
show fan, because those were just a few of the major
nuances that we didn't get to see - but we should have.

2. Ricki - Now I'm not going to blast Ricki as much as
everyone else is. I think that she did an 'ok' job.
There were two problems though with what she did. The
first one is that it didn't fell like she was in tune
with the game. She could read off the cue cards very
well, but it didn't feel like she did her homework on
how the mechanics of the games actually worked. The
second problem wasn't completely her fault...

3. Everyone else - ...because Ricki was only limited to
what she had to work with. Ricki seemed to be on one
plane of existence and the other celebrities seemed to
be on another plane of existence. Say all you want about
the Celebrity Millionaire contestants, but at least they
knew how to play the game. Not only did it seem that
only Paige and Lance knew what was going on, but it also
seemed like they were the only people who wanted to be
there. They both understood the games, but everyone else
were either playing badly or won their games out of
sheer luck. We'll get to that on the later segment...

4. Pacing - So I know that you have to stretch a 30
minute game into 60 minutes, but both TPIR and LMAD
showed us all how NOT to do this. Would it have been too
much of a crime to get rid of the bidding altogether and
have all 6 people be able to play a pricing game? You
could have spent time on each person, had 2 Showcase
Showdowns and you could have gotten a lot more gameplay
in. I also don't care how brutal Kathy's deal was - you
really needed to get that segment in, because the game
was just too stretched out. These are 2 examples on how
better decision making and timing could have made a
difference.

5. The lack of gameplay - How can you not know how to
play the Race Game? How can you bid a dollar over
someone's non-existent bid? How can you bid $88,000 on a
showcase when the podium only has 5 digits? The gameplay
was so bad and surreal, especially on the showcases, I
expected Sure we are here to see celebrities play, but
it helps if they actually KNOW the games.

There are a whole lot of factors that made this show a
disaster. When the woman who asks how the Race Game
works and asks if Paige Davis (who wins a nickel on the
Big Wheel) gets a prize for doing so manages to win the
show despite being off over $18,000 from her showcase,
it makes the show a satirical mess.

This felt like a Saturday Night Live game show skit gone
painfully awry. I expected Will Farrell to come out with
Jeopardy after the show, and come to think of it, it
would have been vastly more entertaining. If I have to
be the lone person to say that like the emperor in the
fable, GSM isn't wearing any clothes, then so be it. I'm
going to have to give it a robe and an umbrella, to
shield it from the Haterade rainstorm that will
certainly be coming its way.

No infringement of copyright is intended by these fan pages; production companies of shows this site covers retain all rights to the sounds, images, and information contained herein.
Copyrighted material appearing on this site constitutes fair
use, and no challenge to copyright is implied.